Edit: The free ebook ‘How to Hamonize’ is now available. Click here!
This post is about vocal harmony. If you’re thinking about adding chords to your melody, check out this post: Basics – How to Harmonise a Melody using Primary Chords
We’re always looking for new ways to spice up our songwriting. Corey Stewart has twelve of them this week.
But I’ve just got the one: Vocal harmony.
We often think of chords in vertical blocks, a bar of C, a bar of A minor and so on. Another way of thinking about chords is to imagine several linear melodies, of different pitches, weaving together to create the chords.
That’s how vertical harmonies work.
Ropes around the Sun
I’m using my song Ropes Around the Sun, which I completed for this year’s FAWM.
The song actually began life as an example for a couple of posts on melody I wrote months ago on songwright, one on starting a melody, the other on structuring a melody.
The aim today is to demonstrate a couple of the simplest and most common harmonising ideas.
1. As simple as possible
Here are the first two lines of the song.
Download Example 1
The melody follows an A minor scale down from C = C C B A A G F E / C C B A G F A….., and is harmonised with an Aminor and F Maj 7 chord.
An E note would sound good all the time, so the simplest harmony might be to sing an E note, like this:
Download Example 2
2. A third up
Another possibility, and one your hear a lot, is to sing the notes a third up in the scale.
What does that mean?
It means, if you’ve got a melody that goes C C B A, you take each of those as the first and go up to the third, giving you E E D C. It sounds like this:
Download Example 3
3. A third down
You can also do the same trick, going down instead of up:
Download Example 4
4. A mixture
Or you can do both at the same time:
Download Example 5
In Summary
These are only the basics, and admittedly none of the examples are perfectly sung. However, that should give you the idea if you’ve never arranged harmony before.
Have fun.
If you enjoyed the post, why not take a look at this post? It’s about the ebook I’ve just started writing called ‘How to Harmonise‘.
Hey, what a great post Tom. I love to audio examples you’ve put up there.
Thanks for the link
I don’t know if it’s just me, or is harmony a bit overlooked these days in songs?
There’s nothing better (especially in a live situation) than hearing tight, close harmonies in the right spots. It really lifts a song up and into the ears of the listener.
Love your work,
Corey
Thank you, sir!
I know what you mean. There are a hundred okay songs that have become great through the careful use of vocal harmonies.
Personally, I’ve always had a problem with harmonies: I can hear them okay, and I understand the theory, but I really have to work hard to get what’s in my head out of my mouth.
How easy do you find singing harmony?
For me, finding harmonies above the main melody is easy.
Finding close harmonies and harmonies below the main melody is something that I’ve had to really work hard for.
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